Tweety the cockatiel was stranded for two days after the building partially collapsed, undermined by a new tunnel.

No-one, including Tweety's owner Karen Bruce, was allowed into the building because police deemed it too dangerous.

But help came in the form of a remote-controlled robot, which emerged from the building carrying Tweety in her cage.

Now this hospital claims that Google Print will harm children by depriving it of royalties that it uses to heal kids.

Nevermind the actual facts: Google Print will sell more copies of books in its index, thereby delivering higher royalties (where those books are bought in England -- sensibly, they are in the public domain everywhere else in the world). Nevermind that royalties on novels by long-dead authors are a dumb, inefficient way to fund a hospital in the first place (every school that pays monopoly pricing for its copies of Peter Pan drains the same general treasury that is lightened from funding the kids' hospital through the monopoly -- wouldn't it be cheaper to give the school and all Britons a break and use the savings to fund the hospital?).

The sheer intellectual dishonesty here is enough to sicken you. The googlephobes can't explain why the fair uses that will make Google Print possible are bad for writers, so they fall back on "Google kills kids" as a way of bypassing the intellect and going straight for the heart-strings. For shame.

Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity has received royalties from Peter Pan since 1929. An Act of Parliament, passed in 1988, extended the book's copyright indefinitely. If people stopped buying the book, and accessed it through Google's service, the hospital — which cares for seriously ill children — could lose millions of pounds.

A spokesman for Great Ormond Street said he hadn't had a chance to view the site yet but hoped Google would think twice before publishing the book. "I wouldn't be surprised if Google do this, but it will rob the hospital of a major core of its charity revenue," he said.

Update: Bill Thompson points out: "Project Gutenberg already has Peter Pan online as it's not copyright outside the UK. If Karen Gomm [the journo who wrote the ZDNET story] had thought about it for a moment she would have realised. I'm printing it even now just so I can deprive the little kiddies of a few pence!"

The draft proposal offered this week would compel all "commercial businesses" with an open wireless access point to have a "network gateway server" outfitted with a software or hardware firewall. Such a firewall, used to block intrusions from outside the local network, would be required even for a coffee shop that used an old-fashioned cash register instead of an Internet-linked credit card system that could be vulnerable to intrusions...

According to the Westchester proposal, public Internet access sites also would have to post a sign saying: "You are accessing a network which has been secured with firewall protection. Since such protection does not guarantee the security of your personal information, use discretion." Violations of any part of the law would be punishable with fines of $250 or $500.

Mr. Gerdes knew that Andesans already had exposure to Wi-Fi: Rosalie Glauser, the owner of the Slow Down Food Company here, has been offering it to customers since 2004. After he plugged a Linksys router and antenna into his Internet-equipped cable jack - provided by the phone company for $54 a month - he had an epiphany.

Soon after, he got a letter from the local library asking for a donation. "I like to give contributions that have an effect," he said. He had another router and antenna (about $100) delivered to the library, suggesting that they be plugged into its broadband connection, thus allowing visitors to piggyback free on its Internet service.

Update: 30,000 or so people have written in to quibble over whether WiFi stands for wireless fidelity, pointing to the fact that the WiFi Consortium has decided to claim it does. It doesn't. WiFi is a pun, based on the contraction, "Hi-Fi," which stands for "High fidelity." WiFi "means" wireless fidelity the same way that "foo" and "bar" mean "f*cked up" and "beyond all recognition" -- e.g., not at all. WiFi is derived from high fidelity, but if WiFi *means* "wireless fidelity" then it means precisely nothing, because "wireless fidelity" is a nonsense phrase whose only meaning comes from the fact that you get a pun on "HiFi" when you shorten it.

Update 2: Glenn "WiFiNetNews" Fleishman sez, "Simpler: Wi-Fi is a trademark and thus can't mean anything that's not arbitrary in the realm in which the trademark is coined. Wi-Fi had to have no prior meaning, so it's de facto meaningless. The trade association wants you to think something, but I think we've had this discussion before about 'stands for.' I try to not explain Wi-Fi at all in my writing these days and usually get away with -- I write 'Wi-Fi wireless networking.'"

Update 3 Steve Stroh sez, "I ran this down too with Wi-Fi Alliance way back when, and the answer I got back then is that 'Wireless Fidelity' was created when they started getting barraged by writers whose editors demanded that all acronyms must be spelled out. They caved with the incredibly lame 'Wireless Fidelity'...BTW - WiMAX Forum learned from Wi-Fi Alliance's mistake and were ready when the question was asked - WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. (That's their story, and they're sticking to it.)"

Silly string has served me well in Combat especially in looking for I.A.Ds., simply put, booby traps. . . . When you spray the string it just spreads everywhere and when it sets it lays right on the wire. Even in a dark room the string stands out revealing the trip wire.

The cure is simple, so graceful that it will make you feel lighter and healthier and good the minute you start, and of course you can start right now and you don’t even need any drugs or wine or nudity, though those always, always help.

This is what you do: You throw stuff out. You go through your closets and you fill up garbage bags and you even grab stuff you’ve clung to for years for no apparent reason, and you haul it all down to Goodwill or Salvation Army or (in the case of San Francisco) leave the usable stuff out in the street overnight and let the urban recycling phenomenon work its magic, as some lucky passerby scores your old futon and the three grungy frying pans you haven’t used since 1987.

Let me make a prediction. Five years from now, the blogosphere will have developed into a powerful economic engine that has all but driven newspapers into oblivion, has morphed (thanks to cell phone cameras) into a video medium that challenges television news, and has created a whole new group of major companies and media superstars. Billions of dollars will be made by those prescient enough to either get on board or invest in these companies. At this point, the industry will then undergo its first shakeout, with the loss of perhaps several million blogs — though the overall industry will continue to grow at a steady pace.

And, at about that moment, Forbes will announce that the blogosphere is the Next Big Thing for investors.

Link to pool

(Thanks, Brian Sawyer)

Previously on Boing Boing:

Awesomely weird Jehovah's Witness art

Link.

Democrats on Wednesday managed to defeat a bill aimed at amending U.S. election laws to immunize bloggers from hundreds of pages of federal regulations.

In an acrimonious debate that broke largely along party lines, more than three-quarters of congressional Democrats voted to oppose the reform bill, which had enjoyed wide support from online activists and Web commentators worried about having to comply with a tangled skein of rules.

Reader comment: Zach says,

You really need to take a look at the Slashdot thread... especially the top comment: Link. It would appear as though the Democrats voted against it because it could possibly make a loophole in campaign finance law. This omission suspiciously sways the story.

Harry Reid was the original writer of the Online Freedom of Speech Act. This wasn’t a D v. R bill. See this post from Kos: Link

Snip:

The removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip opened the way for the military to use air force jets to create dozens of sonic booms by breaking the sound barrier at low altitude, sending shockwaves across the territory...

Palestinians liken the sound to an earthquake or huge bomb. They describe the effect as being hit by a wall of air that is painful on the ears, sometimes causing nosebleeds and "leaving you shaking inside."

The Palestinian health ministry says the sonic booms have led to miscarriages and heart problems. The UN has demanded an end to the tactic, saying it causes panic attacks in children.

This BBC article -- Medics condemn Gaza sonic booms -- reports objections by the United Nations and medical groups.

Kathryn Cramer asks, "I wonder if some of the same effects mentioned in that article also are likely from 'Sonic Blasters'?"

Previously on Boing Boing:

Xeni on NPR, CNN: Sonic Weapons in Iraq -- and now, US cities

Wired News story "Sonic 'Lasers' Head to Flood Zone"

Reported presence of long-range acoustic device (LRAD) at protests

Reader comment: Tijl says,

This has actually been a common tactic by the Israelis for a long while, mostly in the neighbouring country of Lebanon. This includes mock divebombing runs, and sometimes even firing live ammo. There's also the danger of windows being blown out. And I must say, even if you're on the other end of a phone somewhere in another country, it still scares the shit out of you. Let's not forget that Israel has a track record of actually hitting a lot of targets there as well.

One might wonder what Isreali jets were doing flying over another country in the first place, but this was so common usually it'd only lead to to small news snippits when it was more intense than usual (you really don't need an alarmclock in such weeks, actually like now the holidays seemed to have a special intrest). Oh, and sometimes another UN resolution, for the already impressive stack Israel keeps in a desk somewhere, saying it's really *really* naughty to do that.

Example of a link reporting this from 1998: Link

I guess they had those jets just standing around now, looking for something to do.

Look for Bigfoot hunting to be the next wave in fictional television productions. First out of the gate: "Strange Wilderness" in 2006. The show would join the growing ranks of new television series with cryptozoological themes, like "Surface" on NBC-TV.

The plot for "Strange Wilderness" has two "animal enthusiasts" heading to the Andes in search of Bigfoot to boost the ratings of a show in trouble, which, of course, is named "Strange Wilderness."

Perhaps someone has done a bit of research for this one. The Andes do harbor a Bigfoot-type creature like our North American Bigfoot. In fact, the South American variety in the Andes looks exactly like Bigfoot in the USA and Canada.

Allow me to point you to "Miracle Mongers and Their Methods" by Harry Houdini from 1920. (Project Gutenberg version available here sans illustrations.)

There you'll find fireeaters, heat resistors, strong men and of course sword swallowers. Some of the illustrations are incredible, as is the story of the sword swallower whose blade broke after being swallowed... This veritable queen of her trade kept her calm and saved herself. How? Well, read for yourself.

For all users of the Apple MessagePad or eMate (there still may be some amongst the BoingBoing readership--I know of at least three ;=} ), I have recently released ebook versions of this wonderful book.

"The range was 25 milligrams to 214 milligrams, which was far greater than we'd anticipated.

"What our data led us to believe was that you really didn't know what you were going to be exposed to in terms of the caffeine content."

He says that means some single coffees contain more than half the daily amount of caffeine that is considered safe to drink without any side-effects.

An upper right permanent canine tooth, believed to have been extracted from Napoleon's mouth by his St Helena physician Barry O'Meara, 1817, the tooth well worn and sl. cracked, brown stain to root, approx. 25 mm, glued lengthways to a piece of card with a biro inscription [in Cecilia Laura White's hand], loosely contained in a small old glazed casket with gilt trim and legs and hinged lid, together with a soiled and damaged card of the tooth's provenance dated 1890 and written by the above-mentioned Cecilia White's mother Cecilia Montagu, plus an engraved brass name plaque of Francesco Maceroni, a further note of provenance in Cecilia White's hand and a photocopy of provenance in the form of a family tree, also in the hand of Cecilia White, dated 15th September 1962, with an additional note by the current owner...

Dr Alexander Baxter, Lowe's deputy inspector of hospitals on St Helena, also notes this extraction in a letter of 17th November 1817: "I have the honor to inform your Excellency that Napoleon Bonaparte suffered a good deal from Toothack on the night of the 15th instant, and in consequence was at last induced to permit Mr. O'Meara to extract the dent sapientie of the right side of the upper jaw. This is the first surgical operation that has ever been performed upon his body. The tooth was carrious in two places."

Sword swallowing is not an illusion but, unlike in normal swallowing (when the tongue pushes the bolus up against the palate with the neck in a neutral position), the back of the tongue is pushed forwards and the neck hyperextended. Repeated practice enables suppression of the gag reflex. The pharynx is thrust forward and the cricopharyngeus relaxed. The sword may be passed after deep inspiration with the pharynx filled with air—one practitioner describes "sucking in" rather than swallowing the sword. Once past the pharynx, the lubricated sword is swiftly passed, straightening the distensible and elastic oesophagus. Gravity helps, for the performer is always upright.

The sword passes within millimetres of the heart, aorta, and other vitals but, surprisingly, few deaths related to sword swallowing have been described. A Canadian sword swallower did die, but that was after swallowing an umbrella. Another performer fell from the stage with the sword in situ, and was immediately taken for an x ray but remained unscathed. One amateur attempted to swallow a 90 cm blade while under the influence of alcohol and was said to have lacerated his oesophagus and punctured his lung, but the outcome is not known.

A process of relaying a story having a timeline and a unique plot involving characters comprises: indicating a character's desire at a first time in the timeline for at least one of the following: a) to remain asleep or unconscious until a particular event occurs; and b) to forget or be substantially unable to recall substantially all events during the time period from the first time until a particular event occurs; indicating the character's substantial inability at a time after the occurrence of the particular event to recall substantially all events during the time period from the first time to the occurrence of the particular event; and indicating that during the time period the character was an active participant in a plurality of events.

They have at last invented a way to destroy all cultural development forevermore. That's an achievement of a sort. (...) Remember, a published patent means it hasn't issued yet. But if you wish to throw up, read about the dreams being dreamed. They are willing to destroy the world's culture for $67,200. Here's Knight and Associates' legal analysis, which they are probably proud of. To me, it's like figuring out how to destroy the planet and all human life on it. What is your responsibility? To implement it, to even tell anyone what you cleverly invented? I know. Knight and Associates would advise patenting it first.

Reader comment: Jim's Polka says:

No patent has actually been granted. So far, he's filed a provisional application for a patent and a non-provisional application. Now that it's been 18 months since he filed the application, the PTO has published it, i.e. made it publicly available. Groklaw, like Slashdot did yesterday, made a mistake in their headline that implied that the patent had already been granted. She does, however, note in the third paragraph that the patent hasn't been granted yet.

As for me, I'm with Groklaw - I'm not persuaded by their legal analysis. But it's too early to get upset with the PTO or the patent system about this. The PTO hasn't even had the chance to reject it yet. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind smacking the idiot who filed the application.

Remember, this is all based off of this guy's press release. I think he's taken advantage of people's prejudices about the patent system to earn himself some easy publicity.

Most patent applications are published after 18 months. Knight & Assocs. want to make a business of filing "plot patents." This is their test case, which is why these crackpots are willing to waste a lot of money on it. If they do succeed (in my view, they certainly will not) it would certainly lead to Congressional action to cut back the patent system.

Since this was a provisional patent application, and according to the American Inventor's Protection Act (AIPA), Knight and his buddies can now -- as of yesterday -- extract reasonable royalties from any infringers. Right to Create has the details. Let the litigation begin!

Previously: Mice sing for sex

Although humans have long been listening to the serenades of birds and whales, among other animals, mouse songs have fallen on deaf ears for the past several decades, because they are out of the range of human hearing. When (scientist Timothy E.) Holy and co-author Zhongsheng Guo started taping the ultrasonic utterances of 45 male mice, they quickly found that the high-pitched sounds exhibited repetitive phrases, or motifs, that varied over time but that were repeated with some regularity. In short, they qualified as songs...

Although the lovestruck mouse's repertoire cannot compete with that of an adult canary, the singing of mice does offer an opportunity to potentially study the genetics of song learning, especially if mice learn from a "tutor" as many birds do. And the wild cousin of the lab mouse just may possess an even wider range. "Domestication has changed many aspects of mouse behavior," Holy remarks. "It would be intriguing to find out if [wild mouse] songs are more or less birdlike than the lab mouse songs."

Larry Harvey: Sometimes all you do, as a leader, is pay a great deal of attention to the nature of what the experience evokes, and then you try to articulate it at that moment when they feel it. It's just like a good music track in a movie. A really good music track doesn't tell you what to feel. It expresses what you feel half-a-beat after you felt it.

In recent years car manufacturers have provided trunk release tabs so we can let ourselves out, but there were two problems with the early tabs. One, they used words to instruct those trapped inside on what to do, and two, the trunk of a car is pitch black when the door is closed. If you had a pair of night vision goggles on but happened to be illiterate, the tab would be of no help. If you could read, but weren't wearing night vision goggles, you were still out of luck. Only those who could both read and happened to be wearing a pair of night vision goggles at the time they fell into the trunk could be expected to free themselves.

The new Ford Focus has solved both of these problems with an ingenious pull tab that glows in the dark and has an easy-to-comprehend symbol. This is progress at its best.
Link

So should 13-year-old girls be given doses of oestrogen in the hope that they will grow into more beautiful women? “Absolutely not,” Law Smith says. “It certainly may make them more attractive, but who knows what other effects the hormone may have?"

Of course there may be an easier way - faking it. A further study by Law Smith's group found that when women wore make-up the correlation between perceived attraction and oestrogen levels was completely masked, because make-up improved appearance.

Reader comment: Auna says: "In the post about hormone levels on boingboing, you say 'They then created two composite photos, one composed of 10 pictures of the women on the days of highest estrogen levels, and the other on the days of the lowest levels.' In the article at NewScientist, it says 'One composite was an amalgamation of the 10 women with the lowest peak-oestrogen levels, while the other image was a combination of the 10 women with the highest levels.'"

"I don't mean to sound nitpicky, but it isn't actually the same 10 women at different points in their menstral cycle. It is 20 different women, 10 with high estrogen levels and 10 with low estrogen levels. I only bring it up because I was amazed that there could be such a noticable difference in the appearance of the *same* women when their levels of estrogen fluctuated, but when I read the article I saw that this isn't in fact the case. To me this makes the results of the experiment much more obvious: women with naturally high estrogen levels are perceived as 'more attractive.'"

Raised in the multiethnic farming and beach community of Oxnard, California, each of the Hernandez brothers creates innovatively designed comic stories noted for their epic scope and depth of characterization, and for their embrace of subcultures that had rarely if ever been previously depicted in comics. Their works feature complex female protagonists, Latin American families, Southern California punk rockers, and a gallery of fully realized characters who matter-of-factly reflect diverse ethnic backgrounds, sexual preferences, and economic classes.

“Love and Rockets broke new ground for comics in both content and form… revitalizing long-form comics with new themes, new types of characters, and fresh approaches to narrative technique,” writes comics scholar Charles Hatfield, in his book Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature (University of Mississippi Press, 2005). The first series of Love and Rockets extended fifty issues before concluding in 1996. In 2001, the brothers revived Love and Rockets in a smaller format; fourteen issues of the second volume have been published to date by Fantagraphics Books, Seattle, Washington. Fantagraphics has also published massive hardcover collections of their major continuous storylines, Palomar (2003) by Gilbert Hernandez and Locas (2004) by Jaime Hernandez.

The research shows a rise in a new spending syndrome dubbed BLOTO, or Buying Loads Of Tat Online, with seven per cent of Britons now claiming they know someone who has gone shopping on the web for items they don't need whilst intoxicated.

"These findings throw a new light on internet spending and pose a number of questions for retailers as they develop new online products and services," said Paul Dawson, head of customer experience at Conchango.

On Forbes, Nick Schulz responds with an op-ed of his own, "Don't Fear Google," in which he masterfully deconstructs Schoeder and Barr's crazy-talk:

Pat Schroeder, the former Congresswoman from Colorado is now the president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and a vigorous opponent of Google's plan. She is also an author. I went to Amazon and searched in her book 24 Years of House Work and Still a Mess for the word "property," and Amazon's technology found for me on page 286 the following snippet:

"Protecting intellectual property is my main focus at AAP. Technology has made it so easy to copy anything you create ..."

She's right about technology. However, my finding that snippet and using it for this article is not a copyright violation. I didn't ask Schroeder or her publisher for permission to use the quote in her book. Indeed, there's an entire industry, book reviewing, predicated on the ability of people to do something similar to what I've just done.

First, I poured out all the rock on the back patio and rinsed them off and let them dry for a day.

Second, I took a roll of that rubber shelf liner stuff and cut it to the size that I wanted.

Third, I started scavenging through all the rocks to find ones that fit together in a cool pattern. It took a while, but I got them all situated. We bought two bags just so that we could find all the 'perfect' rocks.

Update: Phil sez, "It's not likely that a setup like that would allow the jellyfish to live more than a month or two (if that). A proper environment for jellyfish would require a much more expensive setup than can be obtained for $120 - more like $1200. Living things should not be abused for entertainment in some desktop executive toy."

Update: Bill sez, "the jellyfish tank has silicone jellyfish in it, not live jellyfish. (Which is a shame, as I've always wanted a pet jellyfish.) Google translate of the source page confirms."

Food ------------------------ Calories
Fried Mushrooms – 15 -------- 450
Bacon – 14 pieces ----------- 990
Onion rings – 18 ------------ 1140
Ground Beef – 1/4 lb. ------- 293
Corndogs – 2 ---------------- 540
Swiss Cheese – 4 slices ----- 425
Provolone Cheese – 4 slices - 397
Cheddar Cheese – 4 slices --- 455
Sliced Ham – 1/4 lb. -------- 184
Sliced Turkey – 1/4 lb. ----- 181
Pastrami – 1/4 lb. ---------- 394
Sliced Roast Beef – 1/4 lb. - 200
Bratwurst – 1 --------------- 510
Braunschweiger – 1/4 lb. ---- 580
Wheat Bread – 1 lb. --------- 1030
Lettuce – 1/2 head ---------- 25
Feta Cheese – 4 oz. --------- 350
Italian Salad Dressing – 6 oz 480
Oregeno – 50 grams ---------- 438
Salt & Pepper – 50 grams ---- 0
Butter – 1/2 lb. ------------ 1600
Parmesan Cheese – 100 grams - 465
Canola Oil – 154 Tbsp. ------ 18,432
Total ----------------------- 29,559

Update: Here's the original page for the sandwich; however be warned that some report this page attempting to install malware on their computers. I don't use an OS or a browser vulnerable to this, so I can't confirm it. (Thanks, Andy!)

"Can I quit now? Can I come home?" Brown wrote to Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs, the morning of the hurricane.

A few days later, Brown wrote to an acquaintance, "I'm trapped now, please rescue me." "In the midst of the overwhelming damage caused by the hurricane and enormous problems faced by FEMA, Mr. Brown found time to exchange e-mails about superfluous topics," including "problems finding a dog-sitter," Melancon said.

Melancon said that on August 26, just days before Katrina made landfall, Brown e-mailed his press secretary, Sharon Worthy, about his attire, asking: "Tie or not for tonight? Button-down blue shirt?"

A few days later, Worthy advised Brown: "Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt, all shirts. Even the president rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this [crisis] and on TV you just need to look more hard-working."

World of Warcraft hackers have confirmed that the hiding capabilities of Sony BMG's content protection software can make tools made for cheating in the online world impossible to detect. The software--deemed a "rootkit" by many security experts--is shipped with tens of thousands of the record company's music titles.

Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of World of Warcraft, has created a controversial program that detects cheaters by scanning the processes that are running at the time the game is played. Called the Warden, the anti-cheating program cannot detect any files that are hidden with Sony BMG's content protection, which only requires that the hacker add the prefix "$sys$" to file names.

The update is more than 3.5 megabytes in size, and it appears to contain new versions of almost all the files included in the initial installation of the entire DRM system, as well as creating some new files. In short, they're not just taking away the rootkit-like function -- they're almost certainly adding things to the system as well. And once again, they're not disclosing what they're doing.

No doubt they'll ask us to just trust them. I wouldn't. The companies still assert -- falsely -- that the original rootkit-like software "does not compromise security" and "[t]here should be no concern" about it. So I wouldn't put much faith in any claim that the new update is harmless. And the companies claim to have developed "new ways of cloaking files on a hard drive". So I wouldn't derive much comfort from carefully worded assertions that they have removed "the ... component .. that has been discussed".

"When trying to buy a sexy bra for their wife or girlfriend, usually they point to other women in the shop or, when asked about size, they say a 'handful'."

The wall consists of rows of silicon breasts in all sizes. By look and touch, male shoppers can work out the right size, she says.

A theatre-style set is to be built in the cinema's 350-capacity main auditorium for the event, organised by the Royal Bank of Scotland for a host of clients and their families. The Dominion also just happens to be on the doorstep of RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin. Giant spiders and rats, burning torches, spooky music, atmospheric lights and overhead projections of Quidditch matches will all be used to get the audience in the mood for a screening of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...

"There will be lots of entertainment before the film starts with the falconry, the owls and the magicians and so on, and the rats and spiders will be there throughout the screening..."

"The company that is decorating the cinema will be leaving everything in place after the screening on the Saturday morning, so anyone going along to the later screenings will also see what is being brought in."

Objects are apt to wander. I have found, though, that they tend to travel no more than eighteen inches from their original location. To the circle described by this eighteen-inch radius I have given a name. I call it the Eureka Zone. With the aid of a ruler (or a Eureka-Stik—click here for instructions on making one), determine the Eureka Zone of your lost object. Then explore it. Meticulously.

"It seems to us that one should not have privileges and freedom jeopardised by the results of a mystical machine that is immune from discovery, that inhales breath samples and that produces a report specifying a degree of intoxication," a February 2004 court ruling stated...

If CMI keeps refusing to subject the application to an independent audit, it is unlikely that a judge can force it to do so. This would render the results of the test inadmissible in court.

SOFTWARE UPDATES/ PLUG-INS

November 2, 2005 - This Service Pack removes the cloaking technology component that has been recently discussed in a number of articles published regarding the XCP Technology used on SONY BMG content protected CDs. This component is not malicious and does not compromise security. However to alleviate any concerns that users may have about the program posing potential security vulnerabilities, this update has been released to enable users to remove this component from their computers.

Update: The plot sickens. Paul and others point out, "The patch offered by Sony does not remove the rootkit, it just gets rid of the $sys$ cloaking. A lot of the chatter about the Sony rootkit has been about other malware authors using files/processes/reg keys starting $sys$, which would then be invisible on machines with the Sony rootkit installed."

Update 2: See also this post on Ed Felten's take on this software

"Netflix apparently does throttle accounts that rent more than 12 DVDs a month, which they admit in their TOS. They do this so light users get priority over heavy users.

"The company is offering a one-month, one-disc free upgrade to all customers (which they will charge you for if you don't cancel after the month is over). Big w00t. Chavez got $2,000, and his lawyers got $2,528,000.

"Netflix fan reports, and NetflixSettlementSucks.com tells you how to opt out of the class. If more than 5% of members opt out, the decision will be invalidated." Link

As sales of hybrid vehicles rise rapidly, rescue crews are increasingly exposed to accidents involving the fuel-efficient vehicles. And with up to 500 volts running through some wires in the vehicles, as opposed to 12 volts in traditional cars, there is a growing concern that rescue workers are at risk when extricating victims at an accident scene. It is this concern that prompted the engineers at Jaws of Life to develop a rescue tool designed to meet the challenges of dealing with electrically charged components.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, a former police chief, also said Zine, a former police officer, should not have revealed the information.

"I don't think it was good" that he told, Parks said. "People see those cameras and slow down. It's a deterrent."

Zine's disclosure came during a debate Monday over awarding a contract to a new vendor for the cameras, which photograph red-light-running drivers and their vehicles' license plates.

...

The LAPD has said the cameras reduced the number of accidents at those intersections by 18%. About 64,000 citations, at $271 each in 2002 but eventually hitting $351, were issued in the first four years.

Sprint yesterday officially launched EV-DO service in the US. The service, called Sprint Power Vision, claims average speeds of 400-700 Kbps and is debuting with the Sanyo MM-9000. Like Verizon's V-Cast, Sprint is pushing the high-speed data network for its entertainment value. Power Vision subscriptions start at $15 per month for unlimited access and include ABC News clips and streaming SIRIUS music channels. An upgraded $20 package adds unlimited messaging and TV channels (NFL, Fox, etc). A premium $25 package adds more TV stations like ESPN and Discovery.

Reader comment Demian says,

The PocketPC 6700 from Sprint is an EVDO phone also. and it has a slide out qwerty keyboard... pics here.

I've been working on a project called Mobile Voter that lets users register to vote by sending an SMS message (more specifically, the user texts a CSC, Mobile Voter determines the appropriate district and then mails the correct forms to the user to sign and send back).

We just launched our first major trial in San Francisco. We've got billboards and taxi tops up around the city and have had musicians onstage at local concerts telling people in the audience to take out their phones and register to vote on the spot, which has been phenomenally successful. We were able to mail out a bunch of forms in time for the registration deadline for the upcoming election and will follow up with SMS messages next Tuesday reminding people to actually vote (eventually we'll be able to SMS people specific polling locations).

Dr. Arjun Sengupta, the United Nations Human Rights Commission Special Reporter on Extreme Poverty, visited New Orleans and Baton Rouge last week. He toured the devastated areas and listened to the evacuees still in shelters and those living out of town with family.

Dr. Sengupta described current conditions as "shocking" and "gross violations of human rights." The devastation itself is shocking, he explained, but even more shocking is that two months have passed and there is little to nothing being done to reconstruct vast areas of New Orleans. "The US is the richest nation in the history of the world. Why cannot it restore electricity and water and help people rebuild their homes and neighborhoods? If the US can rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq, why not New Orleans?"

A related commentary by Mike Davis in the same issue: Gentrifying Disaster -- In New Orleans: Ethnic Cleansing, GOP-Style. Link.

And via CNN: Rare historic documents lost to Katrina -- New Orleans archives dating back to 1892. Link.

(Thanks, Ned Sublette)

1. Create quality products and services.
2. Sell what you advertise.
3. Make certain your products and services do what they claim to do.
4. Fully test and study your products and services before offering them for sale.
5. Disclose all risks posed to purchasers of your products and services.
6. Tell the truth.
7. Fulfill your warranty promises.
8. Don't cut corners.
9. Comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
10. Don't try to buy influence.

Previously on Boing Boing:

HOWTO punish bloggers, a tutorial for businesses from Forbes

Lyons's blog-sliming compared to complaints about Founding Fathers

Richard Branson, Chairman of Virgin Group Ltd. said today that his company is looking into machines and new technologies to put on aircrafts to kill germs in anticipation of a bird flu pandemic. He said his company has purchased 10,000 doses of the drug Tamiflu for his staff.

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

I present to you my low-tech solution to a common hassle: what to do with all those business cards you collect? If I were an organized person I would purchase one of those nifty electronic card-scanners and input the card's data into my contact software. But I am lazy and unorganized. Instead I use an off-the-shelf binder full of transparent sleeves with 10 card-sized slots into which I pop the biz cards as I get them out of my pocket. That's the key for me: they are "organized" only by the chronological order in which I receive them. That single bit of data, which costs me no energy, seems to be sufficient to locate most cards. "Let's see I met her before him, and after that meeting." I reckon I have about a 90% percent retrieval success rate, even when hunting back a few years. Good enough for me. I've been doing this for 15 years now and am working on my fourth book.

One of the artistic highlights of Norway is the Sculpture Park in Oslo. The park contains 192 sculptures with more than 600 figures, all modeled in full size by Gustav Vigeland without the assistance of pupils or other artists. Vigeland also designed the architectural setting and the layout of the grounds.

The initial point of the park sculptures was the Fountain. A model was presented in 1907 to the city counsel and Gustav Vigeland was commissioned to make a Fountain. But as the time passed and not enough money was raised yet, Vigeland added many more sculptures to the project - granite sculptures that eventually were placed around the later Monolith. In 1924, the City of Oslo decided that the whole project should be fulfilled in the Frogner Park, later called Vigeland Park. In 1931 followed a renewal of the bridge over the Frogner ponds with the addition of numerous sculptures on the parapets and grounds. For the rest of his life, Vigeland continued to model new sculptures for the park until his death in 1943.

Reader comment: Alazka says: "Reading your note about Vigeland, I'm flashing back to 1983, when at 17 I was hitching around Europe and was quite impressed by Vigeland's gardens. My inquiries about him rapidly led me to a quest for his brother Emmanuel's lesser-known life's work: a museum of sculptures illustrating the kama sutra. Despite denials of the place's existence from Oslo's official tourism booths, my brother and I found the Emmanuel Vigeland museum in the suburban hills, tended by Emmanuel's widow, and arrived just in time for her to tell us they were closing for the day. Perhaps some of your other readers had more luck with it?" Link

Let's say you're on an airplane, sitting next to someone completely unfamiliar with Pop Surrealism or Lowbrow, but who's curious about what you do. Without using any visual aids, how do you explain the movements to her -- in such a way that the Lowbrow fan sitting across the aisle learns something, too?
The Pop Surrealism/Lowbrow movement was spawned in the 60's, with the rise of the underground comix scene as well as the outlaw biker/hotrod scene. Robert Williams was an artist working within both genres as well as doing "fine art" -- paintings that were shown in galleries and being taken seriously as "art". A generation of mainly southern california artists became inspired by him and started painting things that were in their personal experience -- usually relating to subcultural lifestyles such as hot rod, tattoo, tiki,lounge and kitsch nostalgia. A magazine called Juxtapoz (founded by Williams) was started and showcased the work of these artists and the mantle of "Lowbrow" was adopted.

Later, as more and more artists came into the fold and started becoming successful, the term "Lowbrow" became less than desirable. When I decided to do the book Pop Surrealism -- I was going to originally call it Lowbrow, but several key artists in the book didn't want to be in a book called that. So I had to come up with a name and that was the one. It was a term that had been loosely floating around and everyone could get behind it. To me though, Lowbrow is work inspired by people like Williams, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Coop, and Von Dutch, and is grittier, more dangerous, more offensive and provocative, and less understandable to art academia. Pop Surrealism is what this movement has now become as more artists, many former professional illustrators and animators, have expanded the visual vocabulary. Pop Surrealism is mainly technical craftsmanship combined with an imaginative pop sensibility and usually a dose of wry humor.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Quaker Maid Meats Inc. on Tuesday said it would voluntarily recall 94,400 pounds of frozen ground beef panties that may be contaminated with E. coli.

American teenagers today are utilizing the interactive capabilities of the internet as they create and share their own media creations. Fully half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations.

Teens are often much more enthusiastic authors and readers of blogs than their adult counterparts. Teen bloggers, led by older girls, are a major part of this tech-savvy cohort. Teen bloggers are more fervent internet users than non-bloggers and have more experience with almost every online activity in the survey.

A number of mobile phones and SIM cards were seized during a surprise search at Bang Kwang prison in Nonthaburi province yesterday. The search was part of the prison's attempts to prevent inmates from running illicit drug operations from behind prison walls.

Prison commander Sopon Thititam-pruek said there were frequent attempts to smuggle mobile phones and SIM cards into the prison compound, because Bang Kwang housed a large number of drug dealers. (...) 'We have found a mobile phone hidden in food, in pork leg stew. SIM cards were found inside a dried squid. One was found stuffed inside a dead toad which was thrown over the prison wall,'' he said.

"Es todo," Bush told the Spanish-speaking reporter, meaning the handkerchief was all. "No dinero, no mas. No wallet."

He doesn't need any cash, since his staff takes care of buying anything he might need. He carries no cell phone, either, since he is surrounded by aides who take care of dialing his calls. And why would he need keys since every door is held open for him and his car comes with a driver trained by the Secret Service?

-Organs, Heal Thyselves!

-Visualizing better human computer interaction

-A nest of sensors

The trash can and recycling bins are a modular set that would gives both sound and visual feedback. the trash can would only make a sound when you open it (i.e. open it's mouth). For example, when you throw something out, and the can is near full, it can belch. When it gets very damp (using a moisture detector), often an indication that the trash is more prone to germs, smells, etc., it can cry. When you open it up to take out the trash, and change the liner and you have the most contact with i, it can giggle, as in being tickled. The sounds don't need to be so human, animal, or literal. But, with the sounds, the trash can takes on some "creature" behaviour.

Update: Ken sez, "Some years ago several fast food chains tried interactive trash cans--there's a reference in the link to robotic trash cans at Taco Bell. I was in a Burger King a few years ago that had trash cans in the play area which talked to the children, "thanks for the trash!", that sort of thing. It was probably designed to get people to put their own trash away so the staff wouldn't have to do it, but what actually happened was that children would put their heads into the trash cans to see who was inside there. This caused their little heads to be caught in the manner of a squirrel trap. It was somewhat dangerous but very funny. Next time I went to Burger King the interactive trash cans were gone."

It is unfortunate that there are no color photographs of these WWI ships. People who witnessed convoys of dazzle painted ships reported that the scene was quite dramatic. Imagine sailing across the North Atlantic surrounded by dozens of brightly painted ships, each in different colors and patterns. If you compare the colored drawing with the black and white photograph of the ship "War Clover", you can get an idea of how much we are missing.

Update: Here's some nice examples of razzle-dazzle paint on tanks and jeeps. (Thanks, Corprew!)

Update 2 Here are two paintings from the legendary Group of Seven showing ships with Razzle Dazzle paint (Thanks, Shauna!)

As a federal judge at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Samuel Alito has accumulated a lengthy record of written decisions that hint at how he would rule in technology-related cases that come before the Supreme Court. (...)

Alito's confirmation hearings are certain to focus on hot-button constitutional issues such as his views on abortion, affirmative action and gun rights. But a few cases show that the broadly conservative philosophy of Alito, 55, means he takes a limited view of copyright, which could bode well for tech companies, as well as a permissive approach toward electronic surveillance by police.

What's the secret to creating a hit game?

Whether it's a new game or a sequel, we want anyone to be able to play right away. That's why I think Rubik's Cube was so brilliant. I saw it for the first time at a toy convention in Japan in the early 1980s. The moment you see a Rubik's Cube, you know you're supposed to twist the pieces. And it's beautifully designed. Even if you've never handled one, you want to pick it up and try it. And once you do that, it's hard to walk away until you've solved it.

After Innocence tells the dramatic and compelling story of the exonerated -- innocent men wrongfully imprisoned for decades and then released after DNA evidence proved their innocence. The film focuses on the gripping story of seven men and their emotional journey back into society and efforts to rebuild their lives. Included are a police officer, an army sergeant and a young father sent to prison and even death row for decades for crimes they did not commit.

The men are thrust back into society with little or no support from the system that put them behind bars. While the public views exonerations as success stories - wrongs that have been righted - After Innocence shows that the human toll of wrongful imprisonment can last far longer than the sentences served.

we're not using the zed word | so you wanna be a zombie | deanimator | zombie walk | the sneeze on zombies | zombie quiz | how to survive a zombie epidemic | knitted dawn of the dead | shaun of the dead

web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

Bonus, zombie-like action: Peter Beste's photographic portraits of black metal devotees: Link (Thanks, Sean Bonner)

Link (via Warren Ellis)

China is a kingdom of geeks. There are more than 350 million mobile phone users here -- that's more than any other country. As for the Net, more than 100 million are plugged in, making China the second largest Internet market in the world.

Access to technology is cheap. A full desktop system from China's Lenovo can be had for less than $500. And for those who can't afford a PC, there's more than two million cybercafés -- or "wang ba" -- across the country.

As a quick gauge of local "geekdom," I randomly pulled aside a few locals walking in Beijing's Wangfujing district to see what kind of gadgetry they had on them. One young woman showed me not one but two mobile phones in her handbag -- a GSM phone that provides nationwide access, and a Xiao Ling Tong or Little Smart service that offers city-wide access at cheaper rates. A man unzipped all the pockets in his black nylon fisherman's vest to reveal a cell phone, two digital cameras and a flash MP3 player.

You may have spotted Scott Blake's barcode portraits on the internets in recent years. Now, the the entire collection is online, free for anyone to download and print. Some are as large as 84" x 84" inches. Link (Thanks, Sean Bonner)

The fundamental truths of sleep are not difficult to master: one sleeps when one is tired — mostly at night—and awakens the next day usually feeling rested and refreshed.

So why put together an Insight on a topic that seems so straightforward?

Although it is often true in biology that things are more complex than they seem at first glance, it is especially accurate for sleep. This became apparent about 50 years ago with the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This is a sleep state marked by intense brain activity, rapid bursts of eye movement and vivid dreaming. The high level of brain activity during REM sleep created a serious challenge to the prevailing dogma — that we sleep simply to provide rest — and raised a host of largely unanswered questions about the function of sleep.

Intuition also fails us when considering other aspects of sleep — namely that 'drifting off to sleep' is a slow process and that sleep and wake are completely separate states. On the contrary, the act of switching from being awake to sleeping can be extremely rapid, an observation that carries significant public health implications. And patients with various sleep disorders can exist in curious states that combine aspects of both sleep and wakefulness, indicating that the two are not always mutually exclusive.

I want to call your attention to the newest Internet free speech case that we have filed.

The case (...) involves a large company that misused legal process to obtain a subpoena to identify and retaliate against one of its employees. The company, Allegheny Electric, through its attorneys at the well-known firm of Morgan Lewis & Bockius, filed a John Doe action in Pennsylvania state court against a poster on a Yahoo! message board who identified himself as an employee and criticized various actions of management that was driving its stock value down, including, according to the employee, the company's racial sensitivity training which he felt was wasteful. The company claimed that the use of racially offensive language to characterize the program violated company policies. However, after the company used the lawsuit to subpoena Yahoo! and obtained the employee's identity, it dismissed the lawsuit but fired the employee.

This case typifies the nightmare scenario the underlies much or our work in the Internet anonymity area-- we worry that companies and politicians are bringing John Doe suits more to find out who their critics are than for a real purpose of pursuing such cases to judgment.

A few years ago, lawyers like Bruce Fischman and others, trolling for business on behalf of those offended by online criticism made no bones about the reasons for bringing these cases, but since we started pointing to the public statements they have become much more circumspect. This case shows that the problem of bad faith use of Doe subpoenas is a continuing problem.

On the outside, (Environmental Analytical Solutions Inc.) is classic New Orleans: red brick, white pillars. But inside it's more like a set from War Games: dot matrix printers, ancient PCs, and nine Hewlett-Packard gas chromatography-mass spectrometer machines attached to large blue tanks of helium and hydrogen. This is where Breaux does his lab work, testing water samples for pollution and pesticides. In his downtime, he studies absinthe here.

Using the GCMS apparatus, he's able to break the liqueur down into its component molecules. "It's like forensics," Breaux says, gesturing toward the machines. "Give me one microliter of absinthe and I know exactly what it's going to taste like."

Breaux explains how the testing works. He takes a bottle of the liqueur, inserts a syringe through the cork (absinthe oxidizes like wine once the bottle is open), and extracts a few milliliters. He transfers the sample into a vial, which is lifted by a robotic arm into the gas chromatography tower. There it is separated into its components. Then the mass spectrometer identifies them and measures their relative quantities.

One of the ingredients is thujone, a compound in wormwood that is toxic if it's ingested, capable of causing violent seizures and kidney failure. Breaux hands me a bottle of pure liquid thujone. "Take a whiff," he says with an evil grin. I recoil at the odor - it's like menthol laced with napalm. This is the noxious chemical compound responsible for absinthe's bad reputation. The question that's been debated for years is, Just how much thujone is there in absinthe?

The first thing that strikes you about the full list is how little of the grinding dark-core, impenetrable electronica and twisted ultra-noise that he loved to champion — “The unpleasant and disorientating racket”, as he once described it — actually found its way into his heart. There’s a lot of old-school soul there, such as Eddie & Ernie, OV Wright, Johnnie Taylor and Ann Peebles, and plenty of reggae: Lee Perry, Andy Capp, Blood Fire Posse and Izzy Royal. Indeed, if a theme emerges, it’s that he truly loved music that was simple. He seems to have had a bit of a thing about two-piece outfits, or raw, basic tracks with straightforward lyrics: Al Casey’s Surfin’ Hootenanny, five Charlie Feathers singles, Don French’s Lonely Saturday Night and an astonishing 12 tracks by the White Stripes.

My fellow Wired contributor Noah Shachtman blogs,

After months of preparation, and three weeks in a warzone, my entire trip to Iraq has been boiled down to 29 hours. But that day-and-a-smidge shift with "Team Mayhem," a U.S. Army bomb squad, winds up being pretty damn action-packed.

Booby traps, smoking mortars, rooftop gunfire, suspected truck bombs, roadside explosives, and an idiosyncratic little robot named "Rainman" all figure prominently in the story, which appears in this month's Wired magazine. But mostly, the article is about the battle of wits that's being fought between high-tech U.S. military squads and low-tech insurgent bombers. Improvised explosives have become the deadliest threat to soldiers and civilians alike in Iraq. So the winner of this fight largely determines the fate of the counterinsurgency.

But getting a clear picture of this tangle has been tough; military bomb squads, or "explosive ordnance disposal" units, are ordinarily shrouded in secrecy, operating in shadows. This is one of the first times they've allowed a reporter in for an extended stay.

Reader comment: Humuhumu says: "Aloha! Since you grooved on Mr Bali Hai's shriner mug, I thought you might like this cool mug from the SF band APE. It's one of my personal favorites.

Some members of the stunt club were intended to complete jumps wearing fancy dress costumes, but after the first jump were told by instructors to remove any capes they were wearing which could slow down jumpers through the air.

He said that prior to Mr Yankov's jump, the weights that control the length of the jump were altered on the trebuchet.

Describing Mr Yankov's jump he said: "At some stage I saw Dino as a ball in the air. He then missed the safety net, but I couldn't say by how much.

"As he hit the ground I heard a thud and then a second thud." Paramedics rushed to the scene and Mr Yankov was taken to Bristol's Frenchay hospital where he later died.

I thought you'd get a kick out of the very clever jack-o-lantern my stepson Nolan carved tonight. It was entirely his idea, and he had to explain to me what it was. Ah, the generation gap. It is >.< which means "angry" or "mean" in instant-messaging shorthand.

The sex scenes in the book feature tasteful fare such as bestiality with children.

"The main female character, Yukiko, draws hair on the 'mound' of a little girl," Collins reports. "The brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter." Meanwhile, "certain passages can better be described as reminiscent of Penthouse Forum," Collins writes. "Other sex scenes are less conventional."

Collins quotes from the indicted aide's novel: "At age 10 the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest."

A renewed effort in the U.S. Congress to create a federal shield law for news organizations is raising a sticky question: Who is a journalist?

A generation ago, the answer usually was clear. Not anymore. Online scribes and video publishers are experimenting with novel forms of journalism, and even the most stodgy news organizations are embracing blogs.

That leaves politicians--hardly the most clued in about all things tech--in something of a quandary. They're being lobbied by professional news organizations and the American Bar Association to approve some kind of journalist's shield law while being urged by prosecutors to leave out bloggers.

The justification for a shield law is a perfectly reasonable one. After a federal appeals court enforced grand jury subpoenas against The New York Times and Time magazine, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case, news organizations decided to fix the law.

The Justice Department took a swipe at the leading shield proposal (H.R.3323/S.1419) during a Senate hearing last week, arguing that it would let criminals pose as bloggers.

In the early part of next year, you can look forward to a public beta with extensive programme details and broadcast histories. There are "On This Day" schedules that go back to 1933. It's got full contributor histories, and Really Good Search. I can't begin to describe the depth of this dataset - it had an entry for the one time in the 1990s when my dad was on local TV news as a spokesman for Oxfordshire County Council. The cataloguers have worked hard on this stuff for years, and it deserves a wide audience.

Here are some early screenshots: searching for John Peel; John Peel's contributor page. The design's not finished yet, but they give you a flavour of the data.

Oh yes, there's also plenty of web 2.0 goodness: Ajax, feeds for everything, tags, full read-only REST API including FOAF for all contributors, and it's all run with Ruby on Rails. Yes, the BBC have allowed me (after some persuasion) to rapidly prototype and deploy this 7,000,000-row database-backed site in everyone's new favourite web framework. This first version is really just a prototype; wisely, the BBC have decided to get it out there quick and see the public reaction.

Entries from Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia written and edited by Internet users, may soon be available in print for readers in the developing world, founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday...

"I have always liked the idea of going to print because a big part of what we are about is to disseminate knowledge throughout the world and not just to people who have broadband," Wales said by telephone from St. Petersburg, Florida.

This is like the Broadcast Flag on steroids. The Broadcast Flag only covered TV receivers. This covers everything with an analog video input. If this had been around in 1976, the VCR would have been illegal. Today, it would ban Mythtv, every tuner-card in the market, and boxes like Elgato's eyeTV the Slingbox and the Orb and the vPod. This is a proposal to turn huge classes of technology into something that exists only at the sufferance of the studios.

And what do they suffer? Not much. Here are a couple of the stupid ideas we can expect to see protected through rules like this, all drawn from real discussions with DRM lobbyists from the MPAA:

1. You can "accept a contract" by changing the channel. If you change the channel from 3 to 4, and the show on channel 4 has a signal that says it can't be recorded, then by watching channel 4, you're "making an agreement" to waive your time-shifting right in exchange for the show. This is like a shopkeeper hiding a "I reserve the right to punch you in the nose" sign somewhere in his shop and then randomly clobbering his customers, answering any complaints by saying that you agreed to it when you came through the door.

2. Everything with value has a price-tag. Today you can rewind TV, fast-forward it, skip the ads, move it to another device in your house, or stream it to your web-browser on the road. Tomorrow all of these features will only exist if they are permitted, on a case by case basis. The studios will "enable the business-model" of charging you money for the stuff that you get for free today. Here's a quote: "Doing this stuff has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it." They do indeed have value: you currently enjoy that value. Under this proposal, the value will be stolen from you and sold back to you piecemeal.

Now, will this solve any problems? Don't be ridiculous. There are literally tens, if not hundreds of millions of products in the market today that don't obey the rules the studios want to embed in their video. If just one of those devices gets access to the video, then poof, it's on the Internet. In other words, you won't need to own a free and open digitizer card to get access to digitized video: you'll just need to own Internet access.

So what problem does this solve? In the parlance of the studios, this will "keep honest users honest." Which is to say that if you're someone who only wants to go on doing all the perfectly legal things that you can do with video today -- watch, store, time-shift, space-shift, format-shift -- then you will be prevented from doing so without permission.

However, if you're someone who actually wants to infringe copyright by downloading video from the Internet, this will have zero effect on you. This is not a proposal to protect copyright -- this is a proposal to bootstrap Hollywood's limited monopoly over who can copy its movies into an unlimited monopoly over the design of deivces capable of copying its videos.

Any lawmaker who supports this is an idiot. Americans will forgive a lot of sins from their elected representatives, but there's one thing they won't stand for and that's breaking their TVs. Watch this space for information on how you can contact your congresscritter and make sure s/he gets the message.

And what might these MPAA-specified, government-mandated technologies do?

They prescribe how many times (if at all) the analog video signal might be copied - and enforce it. This is the future world that was accidentally triggered for TiVo users a few months ago, when viewers found themselves lectured by their own PVR that their recorded programs would be deleted after a few days.

But it won't just be your TiVo: anything that brings analog video into the digital world will be shackled. Forget about buying a VCR with an un-DRMed digital output. Forget about getting a TV card for your computer that will willingly spit out an open, clear format.

Forget, realistically, that your computer will ever be under your control again. To allow any high-res digitization to take place at all, a new graveyard of digital content will have to built within your PC.

Freshly minted digital video from authorised video analog-to-digital converters will be marshalled here and here only, where they will be forced to comply with the battery of restrictions dictated by Hollywood.

We've added e-commerce to CommonTunes and CommonFlix essentially creating the first DRM-free music and video stores powered by BitTorrent.

CommonTunes allows musicians and authors to sell and distribute their songs, albums and audiobooks.

CommonFlix allows independent media producers to sell and distribute their shows, movies and documentaries for playback on desktop computers or video iPods.

We're putting out a call to musicians and independent media producers everywhere to help populate our sites.

Both sites were designed to work as an adjunct with artists' existing Web sites. Sellers earn 70% of the net proceeds from their sales.

At a little past 2:45 explosions boomed out, audible from many blocks away inside the Hertz employees were running for the door with propane tanks exploding behind them. One mechanic had the presence of mind to hit the gasoline cutoff, but the propane kept exploding for nearly 20 minutes. One woman cried about losing her purse and her car, facing the burning building while about four firetrucks poured water in on the fire from all directions. None of the Hertz employees knew how the fire had started, but did say all of the employees were accounted for and unharmed.

Update: A number of kind readers have informed me that these are feijoas, not guavas. After seeing pictures of feijoas, I agree with them.

There are a bunch of videos of cool stuff being made at coolstuffbeingmade.com, the blog of the National Association of Manufacturers. It's very satisfying watching machines crank out thousands of identical whatever-they-ares onto a conveyor belt.

This 12-minute video takes you form aluminum sheets all the way though the finished cans -- and ends -- being loaded by fork lift on the the trailer, to take 'em off to be filled with good stuff.

A proud Bernal Heights neighborhood tradition, the Illegal Soapbox Derby Society enforces only one rule: Every car must have a beer holder.

Last week when I was testing the latest version of RootkitRevealer (RKR) I ran a scan on one of my systems and was shocked to see evidence of a rootkit. Rootkits are cloaking technologies that hide files, Registry keys, and other system objects from diagnostic and security software, and they are usually employed by malware attempting to keep their implementation hidden (see my "Unearthing Rootkits" article from the June issue of Windows IT Pro Magazine for more information on rootkits). The RKR results window reported a hidden directory, several hidden device drivers, and a hidden application...

We at ATO Records are aware of the problems being experienced by certain fans due to the copy-protection of our distributor. Neither we nor our artists ever gave permission for the use of this technology, nor is it our distributor's opinion that they need our permission. Wherever it is our decision, we will forego use of copy-protection, just as we have in the past.

As a jab to PolyGram, Public Enemy's distributor at the time, the group released There's a Poison Goin' On over the internet and on zip drives, until the band was finally released from its contract. Emboldened by the success, they went on to form their own record label. They created Rapstation to showcase new hip-hop talent. And they built PublicEnemy.com into a highly trafficked website, where among other things, they make a cappella versions of their songs available and encourage fans to make remixes.

Even more remarkable is the way Public Enemy has structured its distribution deals. Whereas many bands sell publishing rights to their record labels in exchange for an advance, Public Enemy grants its distributors a limited license. After a specified period, the rights revert back to the group.

Add to the mix Chuck D's weekly talk show on the Air America radio network, his own channel on AOL Radio and the band's regular tours of Asia, Europe and the United States, and Public Enemy becomes a prime example of the success that follows from a properly executed do-it-yourself strategy.

Vincent-Phoenix said she has also seen test products that allow guests to interact with existing attractions. Earlier this year, Disney tested handheld products that could help ambitious park-goers find Injun Joe's treasure on Tom Sawyer Island or capture ghosts at the Haunted Mansion, she said. "These are attractions that have existed for years but where they are trying new things," she said.

This ‘cortical’ model of pain suggests that the brain’s image of the body can become faulty, resulting in a mismatch between the brain’s movement control systems and its sensory systems, causing a person to experience pain when they move a particular hand, foot or limb.

Researchers believe that this kind of problem could be behind a host of pain-related disorders, such as complex regional pain syndrome and repetitive strain injury.

In an investigation of whether this system can be corrected using mirrors to trick the brain, researchers asked a number of patients with complex regional pain syndrome (a chronic debilitating condition affecting 10,000 – 20,000 patients in the UK at any one time) to carry out routine exercises in front of a mirror.

More than half experienced pain relief during and after the exercise and further investigations showed that even greater improvements can be achieved if the tasks are practiced beforehand.

Welcome to the Barbara Kruger Graphic Standards Manual. This guide is intended to service students, artists, designers, and activists that have an interest in juxtaposing text with imagery in the fashion of Barbara Kruger. This has been developed to help you accurately position your own work amongst this famous artist, designer, an/or photographer. As Barbara herself stated, pictures and words have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren't. It is through this combination that we can establish an identity, and by impersonating Barbara's own unique style, you yourself can remain anonymous--in effect being while not being. As Barbara's work evolves using typefaces beyond the Future family and the color red, this guide must evolve as well.

1. Human Lab Rat
Warning: Pesticides are bad for you

Pharmaceutical companies have long relied on hard-up college students to act as guinea pigs. (Dudes, I was in a double-blind Viagra trial! And I got paid!) But did you know that the pesticide biz is hiring too?

Last year an industry-funded University of California at San Diego study paid students $15 an hour to have the root killer and World War I nerve agent chloropicrin shot into their eyes and noses. Chloropicrin is also a component of tear gas—that trusty suppressor of Big 10 sports riots—and at high doses can lead to nerve damage and death. Duuude. Because of its irritating qualities, small doses of the chemical are often added to other pesticides to act as a "warning agent," and it's the safety of those doses that the study looked at.

Coincidentally (or not), within a week of the UCSD study's completion, its industry funders submitted the results to the EPA to support chloropicrin's re-registration as an independent pesticide—not as a warning agent. Meanwhile, Congress is debating a moratorium on human testing.

Water in a baptistery usually reaches above the waist, said Byron Weathersbee, interim university chaplain at Baylor University.

Lake was pronounced dead at Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, nursing supervisor Pat Mahl said. The woman being baptized apparently had not stepped into the water and was not seriously injured.

Inspired by Art Nouveau and the Victorian fondness for artistic design, our Sunset is hand cast using the "lost-wax" technique to capture all the stunning detail of a circa 1892 period original

He pulled out the megaphone and went to his window.

"ATTENTION POLICE," he said. "THIS IS THE LEASEHOLDER FOR THIS PROPERTY. WHY ARE YOU RUNNING AROUND WITH YOUR GUNS DRAWN? WHAT IS GOING ON?"

The police at the cars looked toward the workshop, then back to the shantytown, then back to the workshop.

"SERIOUSLY. THIS IS NOT COOL. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

One of the cops grabbed the mic for his own loudhailer. "THIS IS THE MIAMI-DADE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT. WE HAVE RECEIVED INTELLIGENCE THAT AN ARMED FUGITIVE IS ON THESE PREMISES. WE HAVE COME TO RETRIEVE HIM."

"WELL, THAT'S WEIRD. NONE OF THE CHILDREN, CIVILIANS AND HARDWORKING PEOPLE HERE ARE FUGITIVES AS FAR AS I KNOW. CERTAINLY THERE'S NO ONE ARMED AROUND HERE. WHY DON'T YOU GET BACK IN YOUR CARS AND I'LL COME OUT AND WE'LL RESOLVE THIS LIKE CIVILIZED PEOPLE, OK?"

The cop shook his head and reached for his mic again, and then there were two gunshots, a scream, and a third.

The main reason I wrote Bad Mags was because I wished I had had something comparable when I started looking for and collecting these magazines--a guide if you will. Because Bad Mags attempts to cover such a large selection of subject matter any chapter included in it could have been its own book. Bad Mags is not a complete listing of the magazines and tabloids covering these particular subjects (if such a thing were possible), but is an attempt to give a more complete picture of what was published concerning them at the time.

Beyond that Bad Mags is a book devoted to strange, bizarre and peripheral magazines because the back alleys of the publishing industry have been little explored in print. In most cases there isn't any information readily available, limited only to the information given in the periodical itself.

So what are the Authors Guild and the publishers complaining about? They're complaining that Google hasn't offered to share the profits that might accrue thanks to ads Google may someday display, or that are attributable to the marginal increase in general Google traffic. But on what basis do they claim entitlement to that brand new revenue stream? The money is not based on the public copying the book -- which is what copyright protects against -- it's based on the public FINDING the book in the first instance.

Now I suppose that the Authors Guild folks want to claim that they should get a share of any way of making money related to locating their works. That's an interesting argument, but it's not a copyright claim. If copyright owners approached libraries and demanded a share of library funds because of the existence of the card catalog it would be difficult to stifle the giggles. Yet isn't the same thing going on here? Stealing an analogy from law Prof Tim Wu, we have never given real property owners the right to "opt out" of any mechanism that helps people find their property -- maps. That's just not in the bundle of rights you get when you buy a home and preventing location tools is also not in the bundle of rights that come with copyright.

Already two uses are being considered: a massive data store for City firms or the biggest wine cellar in Europe. More outlandish ideas put forward include a nightclub for rave parties, a 1950s theme park or a reception centre for asylum seekers. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has ruled out any suggestion of using it to store nuclear waste or providing open public access because of the dangers that still lurk below...

A system of underground power stations would have provided electricity to the 100,000 lamps that lit its streets and guided the way to a pub modelled on the Red Lion in Whitehall...

Hundreds of swivel chairs delivered in 1959 are still unpacked. There are boxes of government-issue glass ashtrays, lavatory brushes and civil service tea sets.

Pictures of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Grace Kelly are pinned to the walls. The canteen has murals of British sporting scenes painted by Olga Lehmann who went on to design costumes for films such as The Guns of Navarone and Kidnapped.

The magazine will focus on publishing side-stories from the long-running serials that are Baen's stock-in-trade, and promises to pay enough that writers could make a substantial portion of their living from for them.

Eric's first book, 1632, was a cracking alternate-history/military sf novel about a small working-class mining town in contemporary Virginia that gets magicked back to Germany in the midst of the 30 Years War and where the local miner's union sets about using its technology advantage to bring democratic reforms to Europe, devoted to toppling monarchies in favor of technocentric constitutional democracies.

Eric convinced Baen to release its books as free, freely redistributable downloads, a move that has sold lots and lots more books, making it good karma and good business.

Baen's Astounding Stories Universe will sell for $6 an issue -- I'm guessing we're talking about a PDF here? -- and individual stories for a dollar. I'm not a huge believer in the market for pay-to-read electronic books, but it's really cool to see a publisher playing with it. Let's just hope they don't screw it up by adding DRM to it!

"Although the magazine is focused toward established popular writers, we also intend to make it a good place for new writers to emerge," Flint said. "To that end, we're setting aside a special 'Introducing ... ' section of the magazine, which will be reserved entirely for new writers. We will publish at least one such story per issue, and probably two or three." Readers can also expect to see some classic reprints from authors who are no longer living.

In addition to the fiction, the magazine will also feature several factual articles in each issue. "Some of these will be straight-forward factual pieces, of the sort that SF magazines have been publishing for decades," Flint said. "Others will be more personal, anecdotal accounts of the interface between writers, scientists and the rest of the world that we think readers will find interesting."

Update: Eric Flint writes "In answer to your question, why in God's name would Baen started screwing around with DRM when we've never encrypted _anything_???? The magazine will come completely unencrypted, as do all Baen electronic products.

"PS.  It's not at all accurate to say that I "convinced" Jim Baen.  Jim started Webscriptions on an unencrypted basis before I knew anything about it.  And the Free Library got started when I put up MOTHER OF DEMONS -- at Jim's suggestion."

Update 2: John Joseph sez "Baen has changed the name of the mag to Jim Baen's UNIVERSE. Rumor has it they were contacted by the rightholders to the name ASTOUNDING (Dell Magazines, one would assume), and rather than fight it out, they just dumped the name in favor of a new one."

The digital television channel Sci Fi UK has seen a 10 per cent rise in the number of female viewers over the past eight years and 1.4 million women now tune in - 51 per cent of the audience. The channel, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, links the rise in "girl geeks" to the proliferation of heroines such as Buffy, Lara Croft and Xena.

These days Goth is "an Upper East Side way of being edgy without actually drinking anybody's blood," said Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys. With a wink he added, "Who doesn't like a vaseful of ostrich feathers at the end of the day?"

The costumes and ornaments are a glamorous cover for the genre's somber themes. In the world of Goth, nature itself lurks as a malign protagonist, causing flesh to rot, rivers to flood, monuments to crumble and women to turn into slatterns, their hair streaming and lipstick askew.

Some scholars see the Gothic mood as especially resonant in periods of uncertainty. Allen Grove, an associate professor of English at Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y., theorizes that during war or in the aftermath of disaster, whether wrought by a hurricane or a terrorist cell, dark themes surface in part as a way to confront society's worst fears.

"We're somehow trying to deal with calamity and death," said Dr. Grove, who teaches a popular course on the literature of horror. "Revisiting Gothic themes might be one way to embrace those things and try to come to terms with them."

2 In the form of Shia Islam practised in Iran, Muslims are allowed to enter into temporary marriages with each other, sometimes lasting only a few hours. Critics say this in effect legalises prostitution, and women who enter into these sigheh contracts are often ostracised. But the practice is defended as a legal loophole to provide inheritance rights for children who would otherwise be born out of wedlock. Sigheh websites have been set up to offer advice to prospective brides and grooms...

6 While official dress codes are very strict, many young Iranians delight in pushing back the boundaries of what is acceptable. Teenage girls in Tehran wear the most vestigial of see-through headscarves and tight overcoats that barely cover the bottom. This season gypsy-style scarves are in, featuring traditional Turkmen floral designs. Cosmetic surgery is all the rage, with girls proudly displaying a plaster to show their nose has recently been "fixed".